Medical deportations are a reality that exists in practice, but not in policy. Various terms — “medical removal,” “medical repatriation,” “medical rendition,” and “international patient dumping” — are used to describe the practice of forcibly removing low-income, uninsured immigrant patients to other countries in order to avoid the burden of costly long-term care by hospitals. This presentation provides greater detail about this little-known practice, including its historical formation, how it operates, and it's larger social and legal implications. Medical deportations serve as important evidence of the current state of healthcare provision and immigration control.

Lisa Sun-Hee Park is professor and chair of Asian American Studies, with affiliations in Sociology and Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Park’s interdisciplinary research focuses on the politics of migration, race, health care, and environmental justice. Her most recent books include: Entitled to Nothing: The Struggle for Immigrant Health Care in the Age of Welfare Reform (NYU 2011) and The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants vs. the Environment in America’s Eden (co-authored with David N. Pellow, NYU 2011).